Tales from the Inner City (Walker Studio)

by Shaun Tan

[nannah]

“But we do sense them, we know they are there, somewhere in the microcosmic vibrations of wires and bloodstreams, a tangle of chromosomes, all those other selves. The ones we first met as poor lungfish gasping in the gutters of our crisis, who mirrored our good intentions so diligently, and who saw in our wind-blasted, bone-weary compassion a great hope for the future, right at the moment we bent down to pick them up.”

This book changed me a little with each story and painting. The whole thing is like a work of art of a kind that would stop me dead in my tracks and make me stare at till the gallery closes.

Tales from the Inner City is a collection of not only Shaun Tan’s lovely poetry and short fiction, but also many of his absolutely jaw-dropping artwork, the cover being one. His art is much like his fiction: glittery, almost dream-like, and very much inspiring a lot of thought.

Each of the twenty-five works uses an animal as inspiration (including us humans), and has at least one (and up to thirteen) paintings accompanying it. They’re all a bit strange, a bit otherworldly, relevant, and oddly touching. They can range in subject from how animals can’t “invade” human spaces they’ve always belonged in -- to our obsession with death -- to our inability to slow down and enjoy the moment, etc. I didn’t understand them all (some might not even have a deeper meaning beyond the text), and I’m not going to pretend my interpretations are “right” or the best ones, but I'm guessing what you get out of this novel is your own interpretation of it. My favorite stories were the ones about the moonfish, the tiger, the lungfish, and the butterflies.

It’s hard to say anything more than the writing is beautiful, the art is beautiful, and the book as a whole … beautiful.
(Also side note: but I'm also very, very happy to see a YA book like this that doesn't dumb down its contents for or talk down to its audience!)